KCET –- With the one-year mark of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan approaching last month, the White House selected 13 passenger rail corridors in 31 states to receive funding. High-speed rail projects in Florida, Illinois and California were the big winners.

KCET public television in Southern California — as a part of Blueprint America — reports on California’s plans to build a high speed rail system connecting major metropolitan areas in the Golden State. On one side, supporters say it will reduce gridlock (on the road and at the airport) and change travel in the state by moving commuters between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 2 hours and 40 minutes. On the other side, detractors, increasingly worried about cost (to the state and riders), say the project is on track to build a very big and very fast white elephant.

KCET — No longer is the argument for investment in renewable energy just about climate change. As America’s economy is in rescission, renewable energy could create a boom in good paying jobs — ‘green jobs’. KCET public television in California — as a part of Blueprint America — reports how some untypical students at an East Los Angeles school and an economically hard hit community in the Antelope Valley are hoping to make it in a green economy.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/public-works/video-blueprint-california/715/feed/0The Next American System: [VIDEO] The Stop at Visaliahttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-next-american-system/video-the-stop-at-visalia/879/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-next-american-system/video-the-stop-at-visalia/879/#disqus_threadMon, 08 Feb 2010 17:46:39 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=879The post The Next American System: [VIDEO] The Stop at Visalia appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>View full post to see video)

Even before President Barack Obama set aside $8 billion in federal stimulus funds last year for high-speed rail projects nationally, California voters in 2008 had already approved a $10 billion bond measure to begin construction of a statewide high-speed train network. California’s High-Speed Rail Authority is responsible for planning, constructing and operating a high-speed train system serving California’s major metropolitan areas.

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City (Feb. 8 at 10 pm) follows several members of the California High-Speed Rail Authority to Spain, where they tour that nation’s extensive high speed rail

system and learn about the challenges they face as they try to get the first American trains up and running — from Los Angeles to San Francisco — by the end of the decade.

In addition to connecting California’s key cities — San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento — high-speed rail will link some 20 smaller cities throughout the state. Leaders from many of those communities lobbied to get a train stop placed locally. The potential for the trains to link local economies to state and regional economies drove those efforts — and no one wanted to be passed by.

The agricultural community of Visalia – located 44 miles south of Fresno and nearly the midpoint between Sacramento and Los Angeles – was one such city.

Blueprint America followed Mayor Jesus Gamboa as he lobbied the California High-Speed Rail Authority for a train stop for Visalia.

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America. The film debuts nationally on PBS on February 8 at 10 pm (check local listings).

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/featured/beyond-the-motor-city-preview/861/feed/33Video: City Creek Centerhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/video/religion-ethics-newsweekly-video-city-creek-center/834/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/video/religion-ethics-newsweekly-video-city-creek-center/834/#disqus_threadFri, 06 Nov 2009 21:06:34 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=834The post Video: City Creek Center appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>Blueprint America — with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly on PBS — in a report on the rebuilding of Salt Lake City — a private project changing the public landscape.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — are building an enormous new downtown development of high end shops, condos, and offices. But this is not being done with stimulus money, or even one cent of local taxpayers’ money. This project, known as City Creek Center, is funded entirely by the Mormons and their development partners. Is that emphasis on wealth and consumerism compatible with Mormon values of modesty and thrift? Does it leave any room for the poor, or for the variety that helps make up vibrant city life?

CORRECTION: This report originally stated that the Mormon Church “develop[ed] two downtown malls on land across from Temple Square.” In fact, while the Church did develop the ZCMI Center, Crossroads Plaza was developed by Crossroads Plaza Associates, an investor group not affiliated with the Church. The Church acquired Crossroads Plaza in 2003.

The Bay Bridge in the San Francisco-Oakland area was closed last night after a crossbar and two steel tie rods fell from a section repaired last month, damaging three vehicles and causing minor injuries to one driver. Structural engineers and inspectors are working to determine how long repairs will take.

NOW on PBS host — and Blueprint America collaborator — David Brancaccio will be a guest on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the incident and the overall state of America’s infrastructure (Live: Wednesday, October 28 at 9:25 pm EST).

* * *
In a report from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, political wrangling can often get in the way of critical infrastructure improvements Case in point: The rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/video/the-newshour-with-jim-lehrer-video-politics-engineering-intersect-over-bay-bridge/817/feed/1Public Works: [OVERVIEW]http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/public-works/overview/578/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/public-works/overview/578/#disqus_threadFri, 05 Jun 2009 21:40:52 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=578The post Public Works: [OVERVIEW] appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>Blueprint America: Public Works, an effort by 18 public television stations, concentrates on the state of local infrastructure, economies and living across the country.

Blueprint America has found that communities — big and small, urban and rural — are, for the first time, rethinking their purpose. Is a city a place where people live, a place where they go to work, or both? What about after work, between home and the grind — is it a half hour by car or an hour by bus?

Do these questions even matter given the state of the national economy?

The thing of it is that the majority of our money goes to where we live and how we get from here to there and back again. Addressing those costs is the same as addressing the Recession.

PBS stations are producing radio and television segments, hosting discussions between policy makers and their communities, and offering further content online, all as a part of Blueprint America.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/public-works/overview/578/feed/2America in Gridlock: [VIDEO] Choke Pointhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-choke-point/536/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-choke-point/536/#disqus_threadWed, 22 Apr 2009 23:16:40 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=536The post America in Gridlock: [VIDEO] Choke Point appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>Blueprint America — with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — in a two part report looks at the bottlenecks of America’s freight rail network, and the communities the trains intersect.

In the Midwest, Chicago has been a freight rail hub for around 150 years. In the old days, some lines brought raw materials to the city –- like cattle to the stockyards –- while others carried finished products to market. The city’s rails are still laid out that way: a couple of lines come in from the west and a couple of others from the east. Even though Chicago still handles about a third of the nation’s freight, a lot of it has to stop there -– wait there –- and shift from one railroad to another.

As a result, traffic on Chicago’s rails is even slower than traffic on its roads: A 2002 study found that freight trains pass through the city at an average of just nine miles an hour.

There is no agency in Washington, D.C. responsible for untangling, modernizing, or maintaining the nation’s freight rail system –- or for paying for those improvements. Federal support for improving freight has to come through the back door –- tacked on to other transportation projects.

The Obama Administration’s plan for the expansion of high-speed passenger rail in several key corridors – including Chicago and the Midwest – is likely to improve the speed of freight as both kinds of trains share the same tracks in much of the country.

At the same time, the community of Barrington, IL, an outlying suburb in the Chicago area, has had freight re-routed to pass through the city. Residents are not too happy. Still, the shift in train traffic is likely to lessen the congestion of freight in the City of Chicago.

And while the City of Chicago, railroads, and federal authorities have developed a plan to ease freight train traffic, it won’t be complete for years. As a result, the freight carrier Canadian National did what it could and moved some of its trains away from the metropolitan area.

The national credit crisis is hitting the housing market again, this time resulting in bankruptcy – for builders. The New York Times reports that across the county, small home builders are going into bankruptcy as the banks providing their construction loans foreclose on their developments. Home sales are down nationwide, and builders have been dramatically reducing the prices of new homes in efforts to sell them. Land deals that builders once intended to turn into master-planned communities, particularly in places like Arizona, have failed as the demand for homes has dropped-off. This reduction in home sales has depreciated the worth of assets many builders use as collateral for their bank loans. Banks, in turn, have demanded more collateral to continue backing the loans. When builders cannot come up with the additional money, the banks foreclose on the developments.

According the Mary Utley, Public Information Officer for the Arizona Department of Real Estate, there is no timetable for how long the Chandler, AZ development mentioned in the Times article will remain half-built and vacant. “Since (the builder) has been foreclosed on, the banks or the lending institution will have to sell the homes or the property to another developer. There’s no law that says how quickly the bank has to sell those properties. I know that some of the local non-profits have worked with those lending institutions to see that those properties don’t become blighted, or to make those properties into affordable housing units. But it’s now totally in the hands of the lending institutions.”

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/blogs/the-dig-building-debt/340/feed/0America in Gridlock: [REPORT] There’s Gas in Them Thar Hills: Marcellus Shale in Northeastern Pennsylvaniahttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/report-theres-gas-in-them-thar-hills-marcellus-shale-in-northeastern-pennsylvania/333/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/report-theres-gas-in-them-thar-hills-marcellus-shale-in-northeastern-pennsylvania/333/#disqus_threadFri, 16 Jan 2009 20:06:15 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=333The post America in Gridlock: [REPORT] There’s Gas in Them Thar Hills: Marcellus Shale in Northeastern Pennsylvania appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>Gas exploration has been happening in Pennsylvania since the 1800s. However, a new technology and new price incentives have made possible the exploration of the Marcellus shale. It is a geological formation – the size of Greece – stretching from New York to West Virginia and holding what could become the nation’s most prolific natural gas reservoir. In 2008, Penn State University estimated the economic value of the formation at $1 trillion and that, for every $1 billion in royalties paid to Pennsylvania residents, nearly 8,000 jobs would be created.

The pace of exploration accelerated in 2008 due to increased demand and higher gas prices. Companies rushed to add acreage, expand leaseholds and submit applications to drill the Marcellus shale. In mid-2008, in northeastern Pennsylvania, gas operators were offering landowners as much as $3,000 per acre and 15 percent royalty over the period of the lease. A landowner with a well on his property could expect to make $800,000 in royalties during the first year of production. Thousands of property owners in Pennsylvania signed leases welcoming the extra income in a region that has long suffered from economic malaise.

As Blueprint America correspondent Rick Karr uncovered, not everyone in northeastern Pennsylvania is thrilled about this new gas rush. The main areas of concern relate to the impact of exploration and drilling on the environment and on local infrastructure.

Environmentalists point to the vast amounts of water (one to five million gallons per well) required to extract gas from the Marcellus shale and to the potential contamination of groundwater and watersheds. Drilling is done horizontally and uses hydrofracking – high-pressured water laced with chemicals is pumped into the earth to break the rock and extract gas trapped 7,000 feet below ground. Frac water is then diluted before being released into waterways. Environmental groups are seeking increased oversight and regulation from state agencies.

At the local level, the gas bonanza can put serious stress on a town’s infrastructure. Increased truck traffic accelerates the wear and tear of country roads and bridges. Children of rig workers must be accommodated in local schools. Pennsylvania does not tax gas revenues. Local jurisdictions with natural gas wells face higher demands for services, but receive little new revenues to pay for those services. School districts, county and municipal governments who own land leased for natural gas are looking for ways to receive windfalls from leasing and royalties. At the state level, Governor Rendell lifted a 2003 moratorium on drilling to shore up the state’s ailing finances. Bidding for oil and gas drilling rights on state forest land atop the Marcellus shale was initiated in September 2008. The lease revenues will go to the Oil and Gas Lease Fund which finances park, conservation, recreation, dam repair and flood-control projects.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/report-theres-gas-in-them-thar-hills-marcellus-shale-in-northeastern-pennsylvania/333/feed/4America in Gridlock: [VIDEO] Power Strugglehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-power-struggle/326/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-power-struggle/326/#disqus_threadFri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:25 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=326The post America in Gridlock: [VIDEO] Power Struggle appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>As America looks to dramatically increase its use of renewable energy, an inconvenient reality stands in the way: The need to upgrade the country’s antiquated electricity grid. Part of that overhaul involves the construction of costly long-distance transmission lines to carry clean energy from remote sites to population centers.

Blueprint America — with NOW on PBS — reports from California, which has the most ambitious clean energy plan in the nation. But, the state’s efforts face stiff opposition from property owners and conservationists who prefer renewable energy from local sources, such as photovoltaic rooftop solar panels.

Complicating the matter are claims that the transmission lines are not actually carrying renewable energy at all, but represent a thinly-disguised strategy to stick to old energy practices.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-power-struggle/326/feed/0Pheonix debuts first light rail systemhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/blogs/the-dig-pheonix-debuts-first-light-rail-system/315/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/blogs/the-dig-pheonix-debuts-first-light-rail-system/315/#disqus_threadWed, 31 Dec 2008 15:18:53 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=315The post Pheonix debuts first light rail system appeared first on Blueprint America.
]]>On Saturday, December 27, Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, Arizona welcomed passengers aboard their brand-new light rail system. The 20-mile, $1.4 billion dollar rail system is a first for the state; until now, Phoenix had been the largest U.S. city without public trains. The public reaction to the Light Rail was overwhelmingly positive. Riders from across the Valley waited at the line’s 28 stops to test out the new trains, and many of the rail stops held street-fair like parties. Valley Metro, the transit organization that runs the Phoenix Light Rail, is letting riders ride for free until January 1st. The challenge for Phoenix will be convincing car-dependent residents to commute using mass transit, especially once full fare rides go into effect. The success of the light rail could potentially influence other Arizona and southwest cities to embrace similar public transit systems.